Three snapshots of party fortunes

With the halfway mark in Stephen Harper’s majority mandate in sight, three byelections set for Monday in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario will tell whether any of the four main national parties has wind in its sails.

If the dying days of the campaign are any indication, they should all hold on to their oars.

That starts with the New Democrats, who are rowing hard in Victoria to keep a seat they won easily in 2011.

On paper, Thomas Mulcair’s first electoral test as leader should be a formality. The B.C. NDP is poised to enter a spring provincial election campaign with a commanding lead over the Liberals. Moreover, Murray Rankin, the federal party’s byelection candidate, is widely seen as future cabinet material.

But southern Vancouver Island is also within Elizabeth May’s immediate zone of influence. The Green party leader — whose seat is next door in Saanich-Gulf Islands — is a popular figure in Victoria.

This is not a pro forma battle. An NDP defeat would poison the well of Mulcair’s leadership. But if May is to sustain the notion that the Green party is more than her personal vehicle, she sorely needs a seatmate in Ottawa.

In the battle for out-of-the-partisan-box endorsements, her candidate, Donald Galloway, is winning with the blessings of author Farley Mowat and climate change expert Andrew Weaver adorning his website, along with those of other environmentalist notables.

But in a riding where the ground game heavily favours the better-established NDP, it may be the only fight Galloway gets to win. Still, his bid is giving Mulcair a renewed taste of the ongoing perils of campaigning in a crowded opposition field.

And that is even truer in the other two ridings at play Monday night.

The NDP may nominally be the main alternative to the Conservatives, but its elevation in the Commons does not seem to have had a decisive impact on the dynamics at work in the Conservative-held seats of Calgary Centre and Durham, Ont.

In Calgary, local polls suggest it is the Greens and the Liberals who are giving the ruling Tories more of a run for their money than they normally have cause to expect.

It is not the first time there have been hints the connection between Harper and the city that is home to his riding is not fail-safe.

The Harperites had no hand in the making of Naheed Nenshi as Calgary mayor two years ago. More recently, Premier Alison Redford’s victory over the Wildrose party was widely seen as a Red Tory triumph over the Reform wing of the Conservative movement.

The backdrop of the Calgary Centre byelection includes an ongoing feud within the Alberta Conservative family. It should come as no surprise that a family fight is a factor in a race that is not part of a general election.

Finally, Monday’s vote will provide a more solid take on the so-called Justin Trudeau factor.

The front-runner in the federal Liberal leadership campaign has been a recurrent presence in the byelection campaigns.

His visit to University of Victoria on Wednesday was the talk of the campus.

In the traditionally blue riding of Durham, Trudeau’s arrival in Port Perry, Ont., was also a hit.

Monday’s results will tell whether that popularity translates into a bump for the Liberals in the ballot box.

But it is not necessary to wait until then to suggest that Canada may be reverting to a pre-2011 pattern that featured a more competitive Liberal party, an NDP that has to look over its shoulder for the Greens even as it sets its sights on federal power, and a Conservative party whose more moderate supporters find it hard to embrace.

If anything, the choices put to non-Conservative voters are only becoming harder to make.

Chantal Hebert is a news services columnist who writes on national affairs.